One day recently we did a brief drive down the Bolstadt beach approach road, where the garden needs weeding if only I had the time, and we saw from the car a woman walking with a group of four people, carrying proudly in her hands a bouquet of tulips and other flowers which she had picked from the approach garden. “Finger blight” is one term I have heard for the audacious stealing of flowers from public gardens. She must have gotten just about the last of the tulips. I shrieked like a banshee but as she was just leaving the approach I did not feel we could appropriately chase her down …If only I had seen her actually picking I would have pointed out the sign that reads “Please don’t pick the flowers; they are here for everyone to enjoy.” What makes people think it is appropriate to make a bouquet from a public garden?…not only the woman, but her companions? Don’t they see that the garden is long but narrow and has a finite number of flowers, and that if 50 people or more walk there each day during tourist season, and each person picked a bouquet, there would be pitifully few left? Why did she feel entitled to pick public flowers and take them home to a vase on her own table? And why did her friends not stop her? I well understand the term “seeing red” when I observe such disregard. One woman who had stolen quite a large bouquet once had the nerve to inform me that it was job security because the city would pay me to replace the flowers! I was so aghast that I could not even manage to reply that the city has a limited budget and once she picks ALL the tulips (which comprised most of her armful of plants, as they did the woman’s recent bouquet), there will be no more for that year!
Another phenomenon which to some well-meaning people seems harmless is when they walk along and collect poppy seeds for their own gardens, thus leaving few seeds behind to reseed. Each person must think their own paper bag of seeds is so small, but if a more than a few people do it, the reseeding is destroyed. I saw a streetside wildflower garden in Seattle with a big sign imploring people not to gather the seeds.
Even worse has been the theft of entire plants; once I planted Crimson Pygmy barberry, thinking the thorns would deter theft. Six of them were missing the next day, leaving gallon sized holes. It happened right before Mother’s Day, so perhaps some mother was gifted with a miniature barberry hedge. I know that Lois, who voluntarily plants and tends the Seaview Beach Approach garden, has met with similar discouraging thievery of newly planted shrubs, as have the Long Beach street planter volunteers.
My friend Mary photographed a wonderful sign at the Hulda Klager Lilac Garden in Woodland, Washington:
Now, personally I have no problem with someone drinking alcohol as long as they don’t fall into the garden beds, nor do I care if someone brings a truly well behaved dog as long as it doesn’t romp through the flowers and snap them off…but if only people would stop picking those bouquets!
The beach approach poppies are best left to reseed themselves for the enjoyment of all.
[2012 note: In the years since then, we have replaced the delicate strip of poppies and other reseeding flowers with tough rugosa roses that have pretty much taken over the entire approach garden. They are pretty, but not as pretty. The flower pickers and especially the trampling of the garden during kite festival was too disheartening. The rugosa roses defend themselves.]
[…] 20 May 2007 — some thoughts on finger blight (a rant) 21 May 2007 — Astoria, Oregon, garden city […]
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[…] the 29th of July, I was completely fed up with the finger blight…nay, outright theft…that plagued one particular planter down by the boatyard. Every […]
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[…] hall to pick up our first check of the year, I saw a chilling sight on the sidewalk: evidence of finger blight! If I see one little flower like this discarded on the pavement, I know that it could only have […]
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[…] be glorious and is instead a big nothingness. At least I know that Eartha and Tilth and I all share the same problem and I am sure many other public gardeners empathize with my […]
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